The film was based on an original script by experienced TV writer Judith Colquhoun (it was her idea to use the poem Jenny Kissed Me).

Trenchard-Smith said he identified with the "human tragedy" of the story where a man came home and lost his partner and step daughter of the past six years overnight.One important element in the film is commitment to family and children, as opposed to individual selfishness and the fear of loss of freedom.

[4]In his memoirs, Trenchard Smith called Colquhoun's script "a well-written, social issue drama, with a slow, spare, arthouse tone.

He felt directing the script as written "would have displayed versatility" on his part, "an ability to do a Ken Loach social realism piece" which Trenchard-Smith said "might have been a good career move" for him.

However, he wanted to make Jenny Kissed Me "less arthouse and more commercial, in the vein of a Douglas Sirk tearjerker" which the director felt would reach a wider audience.

[8] Trenchard-Smith said producer Tom Broadbridge originally wanted Paula Duncan to play Carol, the female lead.

Trenchard-Smith gave an early role to Wilbur Wilde, and cast Tamsin West, who he had worked with on Frog Dreaming, as Jenny.

"[5] Reviewing the movie for The Age, Neil Jillet wrote the film "is good for plenty of laughs though tears might have been what its makers had in mind.

"[13] According to critic Adrian Martin, "Beyond its crisp and efficient direction (Trenchard-Smith is deft at cutting on movement), what makes the film intriguing, even fascinating, is precisely the vein of B movie melodrama... there is virtually no conventional or legible psychology; only a series of action-packed, sometimes barely motivated, behavioural “moves” by characters maintained, for the most part, as walking stereotypes.

"[14] Trenchard-Smith believed Jenny Kissed Me "is a better film than its reviews indicate but it does have a flaw that critics failed to note" which was he "made the mother [Carol] too unsympathtic, and too late in her redemption for the audience to engage with her.